


cigarette duet

by saturmime



Category: Original Work
Genre: Other, Smoking, Supernatural Elements, fuck if i know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-06 01:10:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10322108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saturmime/pseuds/saturmime
Summary: little unedited sketch of some dudes and a manifestation of your own self-destructive impulses(yeah the titles from princess chelsea i couldnt think of one but archive makes me put somethin)





	

They come in to buy a pack of cigarettes, nothing more, nothing less. Twice a week, once on wednesday, around 9:04 P.M. Once on Sunday, 9:26 P.M. Now that I think about it, they might be coming in when I just so happen not to be on shift, but I know they don’t.

Today they look at me funny, with pinkish eyes that probably see on my smock that time last week I didn’t read the missing poster I passed on the way to work. What kind of eyes are the ones that make you think that?

I’m tired today, but something tells me I won’t be for long. It always...happens like this - always on days like this. It’s fate, or just irony, something that only comes at bottom-of-the-barrel swimming in your own depression, stuck in the endless lethargy of eat, sleep, once, twice around the clock, again, and again, and then something happens. And today, today is the day. Today, and they look a bit uncomfortable, whether in their clothes, or simply themself, it’s hard to tell. They get the same brand. The receipt prints. They open the pack. I watch, corner of my eye sort of thing as their sharply manicured nails pluck one out and slip it into their breast pocket. I wonder if they could slit my throat with those nails. What kind of person makes you think like that, again?

They have somewhere to be, I feel it, and today, today for a reason my mind is too shallow to quite hold, I nod goodbye without the slightest intention of leaving off until the next week or month or nevermore. I am not alone in this shift, and, what’s more, I can’t shake the disease of how those eyes made me feel, like I should follow, them, like they have something I need to see.

I am drawn by a long leash towards the ringing of the doorbell and I allow it. I round the corner knowing it’s the right direction, knowing I am now no more than a dog chasing the scent of patchouli and cinnamon into the street if that is where it takes me, but I do not anticipate the banging, shuffling sounds from around the corner and I do not expect them so soon and I am not prepared for what rounding that corner shows me.

It has arms. several arms, like some cthulhu-esque byproduct of my sleep deprivation and general disengagement to the, what, material plane? Anyways, there’s a lot, and all set up against cigarette guy, who isn’t so much beating the shit out of Leviathan as they are struggling to not allow a snaking muscle around their stringy frame and it may be shadow but now I’m sure I see substance blacker than black oozing out where the light doesn’t quite hit.

The adrenaline does not kick in. Like some ghostly barrier, I am stopped from moving forward, helping, providing a distraction - I stand there and I watch them choke and my thoughts are suddenly consumed by the realization that this person is going to die right in front of my and I’ll have done nothing -

Their shoe goes square into the center of this amalgamation and they push back, just enough so, one arm jerking back and digging in a pocket. For a second I expect them to come up with a weapon, a switchblade - anything. but their hand comes out wrapped tight around the pack of cigarettes, ones that I just passed into the same hand not twenty minutes ago.

There’s something feral about them, this solitary being that has plagued several of my uneventful shifts, that matches the manifestation in front of them, like a stray fighting over scraps, they struggle with this animal (no, object?) that spits like a fire gobs of black sludge that touch them and slide right off onto the pavement their nikes scuff against, and then the pack in their hand goes from pale fingers to chasm of the mouth and there’s a calm. It calms, chewing on the cardboard slowly, lost in contemplation as its arms slither back and they stumble away, chest heaving. It’s like some overblown anti-smoking ad come to life, if I didn’t, somehow, know better.

And in a flash, it’s gone. I become aware that i’ve only been standing, watching this whole time, not helping. In the back of my mind, I know that I couldn’t. They turn around, dusting themself off at the arms, and see me standing, just standing, at the mouth of the inferno. There’s no sludge clinging to their clothes, but they rub at a small pink scrape on the heel of the hand, as we stand, awaiting my inevitable excuse for voyeuring upon their heroic acts, like they know I won’t make a big deal of it. I want to ask...did they make that? 

I think that I’m wrong. Maybe I only hope that I’m wrong.

I watch fixated as they raise a slightly trembling hand to their shirt and extract that singular cigarette along with plastic lighter, light the end, and stand as the white skin on their torn hand lets out a dark ooze of blood. 

All that comes to mind is two weeks ago, I see myself sitting with my niece to watch the Road To El Dorado, who, as I drifted off on the cat-scratched couch, taught me that gods do not, under any circumstance, bleed. Standing in that alley as this thing, this person, this being holds the cigarette back to press their mouth against pinkish skin, I get the offhanded assumption that the writers used wikipedia or something for their fact check. 

I ask if their hand is okay. They ask me what do I think, in a voice too melodious for the cracked lips, then looks at me as if they truly care for my answer. What do I think? I think it’s not my place to say. They tell me, they’re new at this, mouth not quite sounding out the words.

Ichor? Isn’t that a thing? It’s a distant, high school memory, something out of a book. I’m not inclined to ask if it might be true as the cigarette glows once more and drops from their fingers into the trash can ashtray at the corner then as they come towards me and then turn to pass me by. I open my mouth, but again, nothing comes out as they blow smoke from tight lips like a kiss. And then, nothing. They stretch out both their wings like two great sails, stumble slightly as they pull their hood up against the wind, and begin to walk back they way they came.

There’s a flash of light, probably a streetlamp bouncing off something shiny, and they’re gone.

**Author's Note:**

> i havent been working on runaway trains at all also ik no one read anythign else i post but i mean its fine its fine  
> nextchapter is proving to be really hard to write its....bad  
> but ive been writing stuff for a class im taking and its kinda consuming all my time also ive been painting idk im a busy boy but i will update at some point....this year.....


End file.
